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I have just received my copy of William
Stout and William Service's slightly revamped edition of his 1981 masterpeice
THE DINOSAURS (now entitled THE NEW DINOSAURS). The back cover describes
it as "the book that started the renaissance in dinosaur books"; I have no idea
if this is true or not, but I can at least describe the effect this book had on
me back when I received a copy for Christmas when I was six years old back in
1981. There are two books that my father read to me as a child
that marked my imagination forever, and I asked him to read over and over
again. One is "The Hobbit", and the other is Stout's "The
Dinosaurs". My dad was never too worried about a little darkness
and violence getting in the way of me hearing a great story, and for this I am
eternally grateful. Stout and Service's superdetailed
and unsanitized paintings and text depicting a huge, real, living breathing
natural world alien from our own is probably what
kept me hooked on paleontology into my adult life more then any other
factor, and probably still most strongly shapes how I imagine the Mesozoic
world. Stout's paintings are incredibaly atmospheric and have a
stylistic elegance that gives a beautiful subjective interpretation of the
dinosaurs and thier world (Ray Troll follows a close second behind Stout for my
favorite subjective paleo-artist). However, Service's fictional narratives, delivered in beautiful prose,
stick with me just as strongly. They describe the natural world in
all its complexity, and do it beautifully. From the section entitled
"Mammals" check it out...
"The top of the tree, the hole in the
ground, and night: their domain. Some eat insects and fill in with buds
and seeds, others eat buds and seeds and fill in with insects. An
occaisional lizard is taken. Perhaps the largest used to venture forth at
night to raid nests and drag hatchlings back to thier small lairs. The
dinosaurs began to tend thier nests and guard their young. Mammals
retreated, and would continue to retreat. Most footprints will soon belong
to the dinosaurs, which no mammal will dare follow, or even crouch to hide
in. Now, on the ground, and only for the time being, whether down from a
tree or out of a brake or up from a hole, all kinds of mammals move rapidly and
rehearse their terrain again and again. They are not easy to catch.
Agile and quick to bite, they are not easy to kill. Only a few kinds of
pterosaur share with them that almost singular feature, fur. The
pterosaurs are easier to kill but harder to catch. Some carnosaurs, having
devoured one or the other, simply pass through and evacuate the small bones and
hair; others cough up the remains in pellets." It goes on.
Neat stuff. This book also gave
me my first real appreciation of deep time and the scope of diversity and
change it encompases; Service's narrative occaisionally talks about
evolutionary, geographic, and climatic change on the scale of thousands of
generations, and of the first time I grasped a world and a span of time immesnse
beyond imagining. With all due respect to my other childhood hero
Ray Harryhausen, its quite an imaginitive and
intellectual leap beyong stop-motion dinosaurs roaring and biting each other
while cavemen run for cover, although I like a nice scantily clad cavewoman
as much as the next guy.
Of course, I have a hard time veiwing this
book objectively, as I have had it and read through it so often in the last 20
years that I still see it through child's eyes. Anyway, I think the book
is a gift from God and required bedtime reading for anyone trying to convert
their child to dinosaur infatuation permanantly. It elevates
dinosaurs beyond a superficial childhood fascination as big toothy monsters
into part of a living, breathing natural world. Anyway, the new
edition...
Stout's new artwork is largely confined to
the opening and closing sections, so those expecting a completely new book may
be dissapointed. However, there is quite a bit of it. I counted
thirty new paintings (31 including the revamped Parasaurolophus on the
cover), mostly full page and two page
spreads. There is a distinct difference in style to the
paintings he produced twenty years ago; the new paintings lean more
towards simple dinosaur portraits drawn in black ink with relatively light
coloring. I am undecided which style I like more; the original artwork
had perhaps a bit more creative flair, although I like some of the updated
portaits (especially the Camarosaurus and snarfing Alioramus) quite a
lot. Other then the new introductory and end section paintings,
the rest of the book's artwork is intact. Its still beautiful
work, although outdated; I suppose Stout doing new updated versions of
every painting in the book was too much to expect.
Serivce's
marvelous (if also outdated) text has also been left intact, and I think this
was the right move. Although the thought of a completely accurate and
scientifically up-to-date narrative in Service's prose makes me drool, finding a
writer that talanted to replace the now deceased Service is unlikely. It
requires the author to look past the hype and agressive, noisy, hyperactivity
permeating modern dinosaur restorations and plausibly portray them as dumb
animals with nothing to prove, but still be able to capture the incredible
complexity and splendor of the natural world. Hopefully, Stout will somewehere
along the line find a contributor as talanted as Service to write a new, updated
text to compliment a book full of completely new illustrations. However,
in the meantime I am actually sort of pleased that THE NEW DINOSAURS is
basically the same book that infatuated me with dinosaurs almost twenty
years ago, with a little bit of cool new stuff.
Now, some gripes....
1. The original edition featured some really great stylistic
black and white graphics bordering the text in the introductory sections
"Introduction" and "Welcome to the Mesozoic Era" (at some point, I am going to
photocopy the words "Welcome to the Mesozoic Era" rendered in the awesome,
stylistic lettering for the chapter headings, designed by someone named Alex
Jay, and the surrounding graphic to stick on my office door). These
graphics are absent in the new edition, althought he funky lettering is
intact.
2. Although William Service's marvelous text has been
rightfully left intact, I would like to have seen more updating of
other parts of the text. The "Introduction", "Dinosaur Dimensions", and
Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous sections written by Peter Dodson are the same
(although, if I'm not mistaken, the little sidebars in every chapter identifying
and giving information on the dinosaurs in the paintings have been updated
some). I don't understand why this text couldn't and shouldn't have been
updated. Dinogeorge's afterword provides a nice brief discussion
on how dinosaur science has changed since the early 80s, but the following
section, entitled "Notes On This Edition", pretty much limits its list
of specific corrections of the volume to giving updated radiometric dates
for the Mesozoic and making corrections of taxonomic spellings and assignments.
There is more to dinosaur science then this. Ideally, a new short (few
paragraph) section after every chapter discussing new information that outdates
the text and illustrations would have been great, perhaps acompanied by a couple
small simple black and white drawings to give a more updated veiw of the
dinosaurs in the chapters. It also would have been cool if Stout had
updated the drawings (as well as the classification) in "Family Faces". Of
course, these suggestions would require a considerable amount of extra time on
the part of the contributers, and are not really critical to appreciating either
Stout or Service's original work, but I at least wish Dodson's chapters had
been touched up.
Anyway, there it is. Parents, run out
and grab a copy as soon as possible. Get them hooked young.
LNJ
***************************************************************** It is our duty to make the best of our misfortunes and not to suffer passion to interfere withour interest and the public good. -George Washington It is your business when the wall next door catches
fire.
-Horace ***************************************************************** Jeffrey W. Martz Graduate student, Department of Geosciences, Texas Tech University 3002 4th St., Apt. C26 Lubbock, TX 79415 http://illustrations.homestead.com/Illustration.html |